Night Owl Cards

    I've written about this card a few times on this blog. It's the first autographed card I ever bought, at one of the first card shows I ever attended back when I was a teenager.   It was a pretty savvy move at the time, though I was not thinking of getting a deal or anything like that. Still the value of Koufax cards and Koufax autographs have shot up in the decades since. I'm very happy I have it.   But my main focus as a collector has not been autographs, it's completing sets and completing Dodgers team sets. Because of that, this Koufax card has always stood in the way. Since it's autographed, I never considered it part of the 1961 Topps Dodgers team set, though I list the set complete on checklists, like on TCDB.   While attending the monthly show in town over the last few months, I've noticed that the one dealer I go to all the time had a 1961 Koufax under glass. Just your regular, "ordinary" '61 Koufax, no signature scrawling on it.   I...

    I don't have a lot of mini collections. I can't focus on that many hobby things these days anyway, but I've never been the mini-collection type. If I did venture outside of my set/team/player-sphere, one of the collections I would set up is cards of players who later became broadcasters when I was starting to learn baseball. They were my first baseball teachers. Yeah, sure there were youth league coaches and my dad and all that, but I wanted to know about Major Leaguers, not that "keep your eye on the ball" stuff. Fortunately there were guys on TV who told me all about major leaguers. Sure, there were people like Vin Scully and Keith Jackson and Lindsey Nelson and Frank Messer. But the ones who knew all the inside stuff were usually called "the color commentators" and they were usually former ballplayers. Ex-ballplayers like Joe Garagiola, Tony Kubek, Ralph Kiner and Don Drysdale were invaluable to me learning about professional ballplayers and what ...

Vin Scully: 3-and-1. And he walked him! And look who's coming up! Ballpark announcer: No. 23, Kirk GIBSON. Scully: All year long they looked to him to light the fire and all year long he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight -- with TWO bad legs, the bad left hamstring and the swollen right knee. And with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice, this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So the Dodgers, trying to catch lightning right now. TV graphic: DENNIS ECKERSLEY  HAS NOT ALLOWED A HOME RUN SINCE AUGUST 24TH. Scully: Fouled away. You know, complaining about the fact that with the left knee bothering him he can't push off. Well now he can't push off and he can't land . Joe Garagiola: He's gonna use all arms. Look at this crowd on its feet. What a tribute. Scully: 4-3 A's. Two out, ninth inning, not a bad open...

(Today is Administrative Professional's Day, what used to be known as National Secretary's Day. I have just started to become addicted to the show "Mad Men." I've only just started Season 2, so don't spoil anything for me, but good gosh, we treated our secretar ... er, administrative professionals horribly in the early '60s. I know, that's got nothing to do with cardboard. Here is Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 181st in a series): I'm not someone who goes around talking about the dreams they had last night, but I'll make an exception this time because it's related to baseball card collecting. I dreamed last night that I went to a baseball card show. It was kind of a combination baseball card show/baseball card shop. The whole show was contained within one store-front room. I stopped near the front desk. Jim Bouton apparently was the guest signer. I didn't see him, but he had left some business cards. The cards pictured Bou...